George Clinton (born July 22, 1941) is an American singer, songwriter, bandleader, and music producer and the principal architect of P-Funk. He was the mastermind of the bands Parliament and Funkadelic during the 1970s and early 1980s, and launched a solo career in 1981. He has been cited as one of the foremost innovators of funk music, along with James Brown and Sly Stone. Clinton was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997 with fifteen other members of Parliament-Funkadelic.

Clinton was born in Kannapolis, North Carolina, grew up in Plainfield, New Jersey, and currently resides in Tallahassee, Florida. During his teen years Clinton formed a doo wop group inspired by Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers called The Parliaments while straightening hair at a barber salon in Plainfield. For a period in the 1960s Clinton was a staff songwriter for Motown. Despite initial commercial failure (and one major hit single, “(I Wanna) Testify” in 1967), The Parliaments eventually found success under the names Parliament and Funkadelic in the seventies (see also P-Funk). These two bands combined the elements of musicians such as Jimi Hendrix, Sly and the Family Stone, Cream and James Brown while exploring different sounds, technology, and lyricism. Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic dominated diverse music during the 1970s with over 40 R&B hit singles (including three number ones) and three platinum albums. Clinton’s efforts as a solo artist began in 1982. He is also a notable music producer working on almost all of the albums he performs on, as well as producing albums for Bootsy Collins and Red Hot Chili Peppers, among others.

Attorney General Eric Holder assigned two U.S. attorneys to lead investigations of possible leaking of state secrets, the Department of Justice announced.

Holder said U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Ronald C. Machen Jr. and U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein will be directing separate investigations currently being conducted by the FBI.”

Earlier Friday, President Barack Obama strongly rejected claims that his White House has deliberately leaked state secrets to the media, saying the idea was “offensive” and would put Americans at risk.

“The FCC voted in April to require television stations to put detailed data on political ad purchases online.”
The opponents of a new rule to post political ad information online have opened up another front in a long-running fight, inserting language into an appropriations bill that would bar the Federal Communications Commission from implementing the transparency measure.
The FCC voted in April to require television stations to put detailed data on political ad purchases online. The information, which includes who buys ads, for how much, and when they run, is currently open to the public but is available only on paper at individual stations. Media companies have lobbied hard against the rule, and the National Association of Broadcasters recently sued in federal court to stop it. The rule is currently under review by the government and will not go into effect until July at the earliest.

Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo., chair of the financial services and general government subcommittee of the House appropriations committee, added language to an appropriations bill ordering that no funds to be used to implement the disclosure rule. The bill, which passed the subcommittee Wednesday, funds the FCC and other agencies for fiscal year 2013.
The move by Emerson adds another question mark to the process of creating an FCC website with political ad data. At a subcommittee hearing Wednesday, a Democratic amendment to remove the Emerson language was defeated on a party line vote.http://www.nationofchange.org/republicans-vote-block-transparency-political-ads-1339163142

Mitt Romney’s campaign released an ad this morning that, at first glance, seems ordinary enough. It touts his economic record as Governor of Massachusetts, a rebuttal to the Obama camp’s attacks on the same. The new ad doesn’t mention Obama. But the ad does suggest a line of attack on Obama that we’ll be seeing a lot more of soon enough:

The ad describes Romney’s “strong leadership,” a phrase it uses twice, and his ability to “bring parties together to cut through gridlock.” Closing line: “Strong leadership will make all the difference on jobs.”

The key to this ad, I think, is Karl Rove’s recent column describing Obama’s main vulnerability as his “unusually weak chief executive,” a view you can be sure is widely held among GOP strategists. Not weak leader. Weak chief executive. The new ad is intended as an implicit contrast between Romney and Obama on this front. Expect a concerted effort to paint Obama’s failure to get the economy to recover faster, and his inability to get his jobs plan passed in the face of determined GOP opposition, as evidence of weakness, but of a very specific kind: Weakness as a chief executive.

As I and others have suggested before, it’s very possible that voters won’t hold GOP obstructionism of Obama’s jobs policies against Romney; they’ll hold Obama’s failure to prevail over that obstructionism against the president.

The new ad only makes this contast implicitly for the time being; but it will likely become a central argument against Obama. Some polls have shown that majorities think of Obama as a strong leader and that they accept that Obama has leadership qualities, so it remains to be seen whether this will resonate with voter impressions of the man. But this is where the Romney campaign will head next, I think.

If Our Country Was Michael Corleone
by BooMan
Thu Jun 7th, 2012 at 10:53:19 PM EST

It’s nice of Meteor Blades to remind us that John “The Walrus” Bolton is a top foreign policy adviser to the Mitt Romney campaign and that he is positively rooting for U.S. diplomacy with Iran to fail so that someone can bomb their nuclear facilities. It reminds me of the scene in Godfather 3 when Al Pacino’s character says, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.” The idea there was that Michael Corleone was trying to turn his vast criminal enterprise into a law-abiding legitimate business conglomerate. And then he discovered that he needed to go all gangsta on some people. That’s roughly how I feel about how Obama has been doing the job of cleaning up after Bush. And that’s how I’ll feel if Obama’s job is interrupted so that Romney can immerse us in another decade or more of war in the Middle East.

Liberals want Obama to be a king, not a president
By Dean Obeidallah, Special to CNN

Can liberals ever be happy? I keep asking myself this question as I hear an increasing number complaining about President Obama.

There seems to be a Greek chorus of liberal whining: “I’m disappointed by him.” “I expected more.” “I thought he would be different.”

Earlier this week, singer Jackson Browne, a vocal 2008 Obama supporter, lamented that President Obama is “…just as beholden to the people who put him in office as any of the Republicans would be.”

Dean ObeidallahMatt Damon, who had very publicly supported Obama in 2008, has now very publicly attacked President Obama. Damon even went so far as to heap praise on former President Bush, saying: “I would kiss George W. Bush on the mouth” in appreciation for his work fighting AIDS in Africa. Although Damon did note his kiss of Bush would be limited to: “Three seconds, no tongue.”

Others turning on Obama include John Cusack, comedian/actor Jon Lovitz, and even the distinguished professor Cornel West, who called Obama: “A black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats.”

There no longer exists any doubt that Mitt Romney intends to win the White House by conducting the most dishonest, unscrupulous and reprehensible campaign ever devised, in mere whimsy. The unethical stench of this man is not only breathtaking, it’s meteoric. I have never seen anything like it, never heard anything like it, never imagined anything like it.

Romney will run against a fictional Obama, and Fox will provide the cover, and unless Obama is able to change the frame of this debate, the relentless propaganda will be potent. Yes, the level of deception is so great it’s breath-taking. But Romney, I’m increasingly inclined to believe, is a businessman all the way down. His ethics are about getting, as he put it, 50.1 percent of the vote in any state. He does not believe there are any ethical or principled reasons not to try and get to that 50.1 percent however he can. A businessman can compartmentalize core moral and political questions into marketing. The goal is 50.1 percent saturation.

So he marketed a bunch of policies when running in Massachusetts – blithely becoming pro-choice out of deep conviction and personal experience, implementing Obamacare on a state level as a centrist conservative, being “more pro-gay than Ted Kennedy” on discrimination. But now he is not running in Massachusetts, he will simply change the policies. He favors a constitutional amendment criminalizing all abortion, total repeal of Obamacare, and will not stand by even a gay national security spoeksman if it means offending the religious right. This is who he “is”. If a line will work against Obama, he will use it, regardless of its truth. Because there is no truth in Romney’s world. There is only advertizing.

There is something increasingly chilling about this shape-shifter, isnt there? He views himself as a product to be marketed to different audiences at different times. And the actual content of that product is completely malleable. It can change as swiftly as Mormon doctrine, when market share is at stake. To predict Romney, in other words, you simply have to merely examine the market he’s selling to.

As I noted once before, he doesn’t just believe that corporations are people; he is a walking corporation masquerading as a person.

Stand Your Ground, Explained
The three legal concepts that turned a reasonable self-defense law into a recipe for vigilante justice.

The Florida law made infamous this spring by the killing of unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin was conceived during the epic hurricane season of 2004. That November, 77-year-old James Workman moved his family into an RV outside Pensacola after Hurricane Ivan peeled back the roof of their house. One night a stranger tried to force his way into the trailer, and Workman killed him with two shots from a .38 revolver. The stranger turned out to be a disoriented temporary worker for the Federal Emergency Management Agency who was checking for looters and distressed homeowners. Workman was never arrested, but three months went by before authorities cleared him of wrongdoing.

That was three months too long for Dennis Baxley, a veteran Republican representative in Florida’s state Legislature. Four hurricanes had hit the state that year, and there was fear about widespread looting (though little took place). In Baxley’s view, Floridians who defended themselves or their property with lethal force shouldn’t have had to worry about legal repercussions. Baxley, a National Rifle Association (NRA) member and owner of a prosperous funeral business, teamed up with then-GOP state Sen. Durell Peaden to propose what would become known as Stand Your Ground, the self-defense doctrine essentially permitting anyone feeling threatened in a confrontation to shoot their way out.

Or at least that’s the popular version of how the law was born. In fact, its genesis traces back to powerful NRA lobbyists and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a right-wing policy group. And the law’s rapid spread—it now exists in various forms in 25 states—reflects the success of a coordinated strategy, cultivated in Florida, to roll back gun control laws everywhere.

WASHINGTON — The House voted on Thursday to kill nearly every action by the Obama administration to reform the immigration enforcement system, approving amendments that would separate U.S. citizens from their undocumented spouses and end prioritization of deporting dangerous unauthorized immigrants.

“The administration is now saying, ‘I don’t like the laws, I won’t enforce them,'” Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-Calif.) said in support of an amendment proposed by Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa). “It would be equitable to an officer saying, ‘I’m not going to enforce any drug laws, because I want to wait — I may see a bank robber.'”

That amendment, and the 11 others offered and adopted by the GOP, stripped funding from government programs meant to make the immigration process, and treatment of immigrants, more humane and targeted toward the most dangerous. Many of the adopted measures transferred funding to border security, even though Customs and Border Protection would receive a $208 million increase in funding under Obama’s proposed fiscal year 2013 budget.

Republicans have generally opposed every action by the Obama administration on immigration, even though deportations increased to record levels under his watch.

June 7, 2012
Millions of Young Adults Join Parents’ Health Plans
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About 6.6 million young adults signed up for health coverage through their parents’ insurance plans in the first year after a new provision in the federal health law took effect, according to estimates in a study released Friday.

As part of the law, most insurance plans offered by employers to their workers had to allow parents to enroll dependents on their plans up to the age of 26, starting in September 2010. Previously, parents had been able to include children only up to their 19th birthdays, or until the age of 22 if the children were full-time college students.

Just 44 percent of Americans approve of the job the Supreme Court is doing and three-quarters say the justices’ decisions are sometimes influenced by their personal or political views, according to a poll conducted by The New York Times and CBS News.

Those findings are a fresh indication that the court’s standing with the public has slipped significantly in the past quarter-century, according to surveys conducted by several polling organizations. Approval was as high as 66 percent in the late 1980s, and by 2000 approached 50 percent.

The decline in the court’s standing may stem in part from Americans’ growing distrust in recent years of major institutions in general and the government in particular. But it also could reflect a sense that the court is more political, after the ideologically divided 5-to-4 decisions in Bush v. Gore, which determined the 2000 presidential election, and Citizens United, the 2010 decision allowing unlimited campaign spending by corporations and unions.

“The results of this and other recent polls call into question two pieces of conventional wisdom,” said Lee Epstein, who teaches law and political science at the University of Southern California. One is that the court’s approval rating has been stable over the years, the other is that it has been consistently higher than that of the other branches of government, Professor Epstein said.

On the highest-profile issue now facing the court, the poll found that more than two-thirds of Americans hope that the court overturns some or all of the 2010 health care law when it rules, probably this month. There was scant difference in the court’s approval rating between supporters and opponents of the law.

Either way, though, many Americans do not seem to expect the court to decide the case solely along constitutional lines. Just one in eight Americans said the justices decided cases based only on legal analysis.

“As far as the Supreme Court goes, judgments can’t be impersonal,” Vicki Bartlett, 57, an independent in Bremerton, Wash., said in a follow-up interview. “When you make judgments, it’s always personal. But the best hope is that they will do their job within the legal parameters.”

The public is skeptical about life tenure for the justices, with 60 percent agreeing with the statement that “appointing Supreme Court justices for life is a bad thing because it gives them too much power.” One-third agreed with a contrary statement, that life tenure for justices “is a good thing because it helps keep them independent from political pressures.”

Thirty-six percent of Americans said they disapproved of how the Supreme Court was handling its job, while 20 percent expressed no opinion. Though the court’s approval rating has always been above that of Congress — which is at 15 percent in the latest poll — it has occasionally dipped below that of the president.

A Gallup tracking poll conducted at the same time as the new survey by The Times and CBS News had President Obama’s approval rating at 47 percent, but about as many respondents disapproved of his performance.

The court’s tepid approval ratings crossed ideological lines and policy agendas. Liberals and conservatives both registered about 40 percent approval rates. Forty-three percent of people who hoped the court would strike down the health care law approved of its work, but so did 41 percent of those who favored keeping the law.

The court was also expected to decide this month whether a tough Arizona immigration law conflicts with federal immigration laws and policies. Perhaps the most contested part of the state law is one that often requires the police there to check the immigration status of people they stop or arrest.

As a general matter, more than 6 in 10 Americans said both the federal and state governments should play a role in addressing illegal immigration. A quarter said the federal government should have sole responsibility, and 11 percent said only state governments should address the matter.

One-third of Americans said the part of the Arizona law allowing the police to question people about their immigration status “goes too far,” and half said it was “about right.” Coverage of Supreme Court arguments in the case in April did not seem to affect public attitudes on the question, which have not changed since 2010.

The responses on immigration split along partisan and racial lines. About half of Democrats but only one in seven Republicans said the law went too far. The recent survey did not have enough black and Hispanic respondents to make fine distinctions among racial and ethnic groups, but 46 percent of those who identified themselves as nonwhite said the provision went too far, compared with 28 percent of non-Hispanic whites.

Asked about the health care case, 41 percent of those surveyed said the court should strike down the entire law, and another 27 percent said the justices should overturn only the individual mandate, which requires most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty.

Only 24 percent said they hoped the court “would keep the entire health care law in place.”

These numbers have not changed much in recent months and appeared to be largely unaffected by the more than six hours of arguments in the Supreme Court in March.

Some respondents said their view of the court could drop, depending on how it rules.

“The government is mandating that you have to buy something, and that shouldn’t be the case,” said Chuck Eriksen, 80, an independent of Cardington, Ohio. “I don’t like the whole thing in general. My opinion of the Supreme Court will diminish if they approve of it.”

There was greater Republican opposition to the law than Democratic support. About two-thirds of Republicans in the recent survey said the entire law should be overturned, while 43 percent of Democrats said all of it should be upheld.

More than 70 percent of independents said they wanted to see some parts or all of the law struck down, with more of them saying they hoped to see the whole law overturned. Twenty-two percent of independents said they hoped the entire law would survive.

Responses varied by education, too. Nearly a third of respondents with a college degree said they would like to see the law upheld, compared with about 20 percent of those without a college diploma.

Dr. Gerald Schall, 68, a San Francisco independent, said that he approved of most of the law, but not the mandate, and hoped that the court would follow suit. “If they overturn the whole thing,” he said, “it’ll be like seeing your mother-in-law go over a cliff in your new Lexus.”

The nationwide poll is based on telephone interviews with 976 adults conducted May 31 through June 3 on landlines and cellphones and has a margin-of-sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

The following words are from the Reverend Otis Moss, Senior Pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Illinois concerning President Obama’s recent public endorsement of Gay Marriage.

My Brother:

Tell your brethren who are part of your ministerial coalition to “live their faith and not legislate their faith” for the Constitution is designed to protect the rights of all. We must learn to be more than a one-issue community and seek the beloved community where we may not all agree, but we all recognize the fingerprint of the Divine upon all of humanity.

There is no doubt people who are same-gender-loving occupy prominent places in the body of Christ. For the clergy to hide from true dialogue with quick dismissive claims devised from poor biblical scholarship is as sinful as unthoughtful acceptance of a theological position. When we make biblical claims without sound interpretation we run the risk of adopting a doctrinal position of deep conviction but devoid of love. Deep faith may resonate in our position, but it is the ethic of love that forces us to prayerfully reexamine our position.

The question I believe we should pose to our congregations is, “Should all Americans have the same civil rights?” This is a radically different question than the one you raised with the ministers, “Does the church have the right to perform or not perform certain religious rites.”

There is difference between rights and rites. We should never misconstrue rights designed to protect diverse individuals in a pluralistic society versus religious rites designed by faith communities to communicate a theological or doctrinal perspective. These two questions are answered in two fundamentally different arenas. One is answered in the arena of civic debate where the Constitution is the document of authority. The other is answered in the realm of ecclesiastical councils where theology, conscience and biblical mandates are the guiding ethos. I do not believe ecclesiastical councils are equipped to shape civic legislation nor are civic representatives equipped to shape religious rituals and doctrine.

The institution of marriage is not under attack as a result of the President’s words. Marriage was under attack years ago by men who viewed women as property and children as trophies of sexual prowess. Marriage is under attack by low wages, high incarceration, unfair tax policy, unemployment, and lack of education. Marriage is under attack by clergy who proclaim monogamy yet think nothing of stepping outside the bonds of marriage to have multiple affairs with “preaching groupies.” Same-gender couples did not cause the high divorce rate, but our adolescent views of relationships and our inability as a community to come to grips with the ethic of love and commitment did. We still confuse sex with love and romance with commitment.

My father, who is a veteran of the civil rights movement and retired pastor, eloquently stated the critical nature of this election when speaking to ministers this past week who claim they will pull support from the President as a result of his position. He stated, “Our Ancestors prayed for 389 years to place a person of color in the White House. They led over 200 slave revolts, fought in 11 wars, one being a civil war where over 600,000 people died. Our mothers fought and were killed for women’s suffrage, our grandparents were lynched for the civil rights bill of 1964 and the voting rights act of 1965…my father never had the opportunity to vote and I believe it is my sacred duty to pull the lever for every member of my family who was denied the right to vote. I will not allow narrow-minded ministers or regressive politicians the satisfaction of keeping me from my sacred right to vote to shape the future for my grandchildren.”

“The institution of marriage is not under attack as a result of the President’s words.”

Gay and lesbian citizens did not cause the economic crash, foreclosures, and attack upon health care. Poor under funded schools were not created because people desire equal protection under the law. We have much work to do as a community, and to claim the President of the United States must hold your theological position is absurd. He is President of the United States of America not the President of the Baptist convention or Bishop of the Sanctified or Holiness Church. He is called to protect the rights of Jew and Gentile, male and female, young and old, Gay and straight, black and white, Atheist and Agnostic. It should be noted the President offered no legislation, or executive order, or present an argument before the Supreme Court. He simply stated his personal conviction.

If we dare steal away from the noise of this debate, we will realize as a church we are called to “Do justice, live mercy and walk humbly with God.” Gay people have never been the enemy; and when we use rhetoric to suggest they are the source of our problems we lie on God and cause tears to flow from the eyes of Christ.

I am not asking you to change your position, but I am stating we must stay in dialogue and not allow our own personal emotional prejudices or doctrines to prevent us from seeing the possibilities of a beloved community.

November is fast approaching, and the spirits of Ella Baker, Septima Clarke, Fannie Lou Hammer, Rosa Parks, A. Phillip Randolph, James Orange, Medgar Evers and Martin Luther, King Jr. stand in the balcony of heaven raising the question, “Will you do justice, live mercy and walk humbly with our God?”

Emmitt Till and the four little girls who were assassinated in Alabama during worship did not die for a Sunday sermonic sound bite to show disdain for one group of God’s people. They were killed by an evil act enacted by men who believed in doctrine over love. We serve in ministry this day because of a man who believed in love over doctrine and died on a hill called Calvary in a dusty Palestinian community 2,000 years ago. Do not let the rhetoric of this debate keep you from the polls, my friend.

Back in December, Mitt Romney delivered one of several “major” speeches on economic policy, telling a New Hampshire audience that in President Obama’s vision, “everyone receives the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort, and willingness to take risk.” The Republican added, “Obama believes that government should create equal outcomes.”

This was, of course, wildly at odds with reality. As Jon Chait noted at the time, “This is nuts, Glenn Beck-level insane. Restoring Clinton-era taxes is not a plan to equalize outcomes, or even close. It’s not even a plan to stop rising inequality. Obama’s America will continue to be the most unequal society in the advanced world — only slightly less so.”

I mention this because Romney gave yet another “major” economic speech in St. Louis yesterday, and he once again argued that the Democratic president is somehow hostile towards capitalism.

“Today, government at all levels consumes 37 percent of the total economy or G.D.P. If Obamacare is allowed to stand, government will reach half of the American economy. And through the increasing controls government has imposed on industries like energy, financial services and automobiles, it will soon effectively control the majority of our economic activity.

“One must ask whether we will still be a free enterprise nation and whether we will still have economic freedom. America is on the cusp of having a government-run economy. President Obama is transforming America into something very different than the land of the free and the land of opportunity.”

First, it’s important that Americans realize that Romney is lying. Reading from his trusted teleprompter — these weren’t off-the-cuff remarks, where it’s easier to make a mistake — the Republican nominee seriously argued that government will soon control most of the economy.

This is garbage, and Romney almost certainly knows it. David Corn recently scrutinized the claim and concluded it’s the former governor’s “biggest fib,” which falls “somewhere between ‘ridiculous’ and ‘stupid.'”

Second, the larger argument Romney is marks the point at which the candidate transitions from conservative to hysterical.

——————————————————————————–

It’s obviously fair game for Romney to attack the president, his ideas, his agenda, and his record. That’s what campaigns are for. Challengers tell voters that the incumbent is wrong and offer an alternative.

But Romney is creating a twisted fantasy land, ascribing views to Obama that are simply made up. Government is not poised to control the American economy; the free-enterprise system is not at risk. I care that Romney is trying to deceive the public, but I care even more about how he’s trying to deceive the public — in this case, by peddling incoherent nonsense.

What’s the basis for Romney’s smear? Obama supports a health care package that mirrors plans from moderate Republicans and which Romney himself embraced at the state level. Obama supports a climate policy that’s similar to what McCain/Palin supported just four years ago. Obama supports Wall Street safeguards that were approved with bipartisan support. Obama supports tax rates on the wealthy that were applied in the 1990s — when the economy soared.

This, in Romney’s mind, would mark the end of “economic freedom”? Please.

The Obama campaign warned Thursday that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney will have full access to those three pots of money and more unless he puts his investments in a federally-recognized blind trust.

Seizing on the Romney campaign’s announcement Wednesday that the candidate would only turn his holdings over to a federal trust if and when he becomes president, the Obama campaign claimed that Romney’s decision not to do so sooner underscores the point they’ve been trying to make about him: He’s wealthy, which makes him out of touch, and sometimes evasive about his wealth, which makes him untrustworthy.

Because Romney’s current blind trust isn’t recognized by federal standards, under which trusts are overseen by the Office of Government Ethics, it isn’t really “blind” because Romney’s personal attorney, with whom Romney can easily communicate, oversees it, Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt asserted today during a conference call with reporters.

(Politicians will place their personal assets in blind trusts to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest when they direct government funds to the private sector.)

“Romney has claimed that his investments were in a blind trust which was managed by his personal attorney. This gave him the appearance of keeping his investments at arms’ length. It’s also how he denied responsibility for investments in a Swiss bank account, Chinese companies, companies that do business with Iran and tax havens in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands,” LaBolt said.

The Associated Press reported Wednesday that Romney’s attorney R. Bradford Malt sold off stock in the Chinese companies and others that traded with Iran beginning in 2010 as the presidential election neared.

The 67 county elections supervisors — who have final say over voter purges —are not moving forward with the purge for now because nearly all of them don’t trust the accuracy of a list of nearly 2,700 potential noncitizens identified by the state’s elections office.The U.S. Department of Justice has ordered the state to stop the purge.

“We’re just not going to do this,” said Leon County’s elections supervisor, Ion Sancho, one of the most outspoken of his peers. “I’ve talked to many of the other supervisors and they agree. The list is bad. And this is illegal.”

So far, more than 500 have been identified as citizens and lawful voters on the voter rolls. About 40 people statewide have been identified as noncitizens. At least four might have voted and could be guilty of a third-degree felony.

The eligibility of about 2,000 have not been identified one way or the other.

Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner says he hopes to get the supervisors to reverse course by working more closely with them. His effort has also inspired a noncitizen voter-purge movement in North Carolina, whose secretary of state Detzner plans to speak with on Friday. And while the Florida purge has halted, the fight between the state and the feds has just begun now that the Justice Department demanded last week that the state cease the purge due to two federal voting laws. Detzner said the U.S. government didn’t just get the law wrong, it’s harming the state’s efforts to remove ineligible voters by refusing to provide Florida access

The Florida law made infamous this spring by the killing of unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin was conceived during the epic hurricane season of 2004. That November, 77-year-old James Workman moved his family into an RV outside Pensacola after Hurricane Ivan peeled back the roof of their house. One night a stranger tried to force his way into the trailer, and Workman killed him with two shots from a .38 revolver. The stranger turned out to be a disoriented temporary worker for the Federal Emergency Management Agency who was checking for looters and distressed homeowners. Workman was never arrested, but three months went by before authorities cleared him of wrongdoing.

That was three months too long for Dennis Baxley, a veteran Republican representative in Florida’s state Legislature. Four hurricanes had hit the state that year, and there was fear about widespread looting (though little took place). In Baxley’s view, Floridians who defended themselves or their property with lethal force shouldn’t have had to worry about legal repercussions. Baxley, a National Rifle Association (NRA) member and owner of a prosperous funeral business, teamed up with then-GOP state Sen. Durell Peaden to propose what would become known as Stand Your Ground, the self-defense doctrine essentially permitting anyone feeling threatened in a confrontation to shoot their way out.

When Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke delivered testimony to the’ Joint Economic Committee yesterday, most of the focus was on potential steps the Fed may consider to boost the domestic economy. And to be sure, Bernanke’s willingness to act is critically important.

But there was something else the Fed chairman told lawmakers that stood out for me. MSNBC’s “The Ed Show” aired this Bernanke quote last night.

For those who can’t watch clips online, the Fed chairman told Congress:

“Monetary policy is not a panacea. It would be much better to have a broad-based policy effort addressing a whole variety of issues. I leave the details to Congress, who have considered many of these issues. I’d feel much more comfortable if Congress would take some of this burden from us and address these issues.”

Bernanke, of course, has to maintain a level composure, and isn’t in a position to start barking orders on Capitol Hill, but this is about as close as a Fed chairman can get to telling Congress, “For the love of God, do something.”

When Bernanke talks about Congress relieving the burden and working in concert with the Fed on a “broad-based policy effort,” he’s not talking about cutting spending — which as he’d already testified takes capital out of the economy and slows growth. Rather, the Fed chairman wants lawmakers to approve new investments that, like the 2009 stimulus, would generate demand.

Bernanke, in other words, wants what congressional Republicans refuse to consider. Indeed, it’s worth pausing to appreciate the fact that Bernanke, despite being a Republican first appointed by George W. Bush, has been increasingly audacious on this front, telling GOP lawmakers what they don’t want to hear.

Flickr Photos

Potus Takes Oath of Office

Flotus & Daughters at Great Wall of China

My Brothers Keeper

AFRO PUFFS

Most Adorable Shoe Stealer

Six Little Babies

Fatherhood

Even though 3Chics Politico is written and curated by three women: Ametia, Rikyrah, and SouthernGirl2, I must nominate this as one of the most engaging blogs I've found. Devoted to politics and culture, these three shine a light on contemporary life with humor and spirit.